CHAPTER TEN
Doctor Elena Vasquez drained the last of her glass and sighed in satisfaction. Her lawyer had advised against drinking any further on the job but let him work sixty-hour weeks trying to figure out why Bison weren't crapping enough.
She had made the horrible mistake of taking a job at the Henry Doorly Zoo’s wildlife rehabilitation center fifteen years ago. It offered incredible benefits and a salary far greater than anything she thought she would be able to make working an ordinary practice.
She was right about that. Unfortunately, it meant her time was not her own. Like ever. Rather than staff their hospital properly, they hired a few doctors and worked them to the very edge of what the rulebook allowed, then kept them on call so they could work them past that edge without getting in trouble.
That’s the way she saw it, at least. No wonder she had to take a nip or two to get through the day sometimes. How the hell else was she going to survive this?
Well, that caught up to her when she got caught by a stupid janitor who decided his minimum-wage job obligated him to have a conscience. Gone was the Henry Doorly job, and then came nine years of working her ass off to try to make it work as a private vet, a vet for pets.
And holy hell, that was so much worse. Every single pet owner on Earth was a Karen. Literally every single one. Of course, it was a tragedy that Frou Frou had the common cold. How dare she act like it wasn't a big deal? How dare she send them home and tell them to feed her broth. Broth! Didn’t they know Frou Frou was a show Dachshund?
So here she was again, this time at the Big Wilderness Zoo in Council Bluffs. Why were there so many damned zoos here anyway?
This job paid a little better than private practice but not as much as Henry Doorly. However, nine weeks out of ten, she could work forty hours and have a normal life. This was the one week out of ten. Because it really did matter that the bison’s stool was ten percent looser than normal.
She sighed and filled her glass again. At least Big Wilderness didn’t have working security cameras. If they ever did catch her drinking on the job, she could hold that over their heads.
An alarm went off, jarring her from her thoughts. She stared at the computer monitor, shocked sober. The alarms never went off. That wasn't a thing that happened.
The alarms were motion sensors. There were no security cameras, but the zoo did have motion sensors on each enclosure gate that would alert zoo staff if a gate was opened after hours.
She wasn’t sure if she wished they had working cameras or that they didn’t have motion sensors.
The alarm came from the wolverine enclosure. The zoo had a big male wolverine named Gus who was known for being possibly the only wolverine on Earth who didn’t try to eat your face each time you approached him.
But what was out there? Why did the gate open?
“It’s not my problem,” she whispered. “It’s not my—”
The door to her office opened. She shrieked and leaped to her feet as Gus trundled in. He growled at her. He always growled, so it was hard to tell if he was angry or just saying hi.
She got to her feet and backed away anyway. Gus was a big wolverine, forty pounds or so. She knew that a wolverine that size could kill her.
“Did you let yourself out?” she asked, her voice thready. “How did you open that lock?”
Wolverines were fairly dexterous, so the lock was a combination that required holding two different pins together and twisting counterclockwise. It was meant to be too difficult for them to figure out, but it wasn’t impossible for them to perform the movement.
Gus trundled toward her, lazily at first, then much faster. She cried out and stepped back.
Something bit her leg. She hopped up and spun around, and the movement tore skin from the back of her calf. She stared in shock at the little instrument that jutted from the wall. It looked like a spring with a pair of those chattering teeth at the end, only instead of teeth, it was filled with nails. A bloody piece of flesh was caught in between those nails.
“Took you long enough,” a voice cried out.
She shrieked and spun around again. Someone wearing a fur suit stood in front of her, holding another spring trap in his hand. Or her hand. Or its hand.
I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.
Then she heard the motion alarm going off in her office. She saw the red light flashing above the door and felt the pain searing through her calf.
Oh God. This is real, this is real, this is—
The figure rushed her. She threw her hands in the air and screamed.